Demure, submissive and erotic, Suzie Wong is that bigger-than-life stereotype, that caricature Asian girls grew up with within the U.S.
We might have additionally secretly hoped to play that geisha-like picture to win our means out of our oppression. But over time, a few of us grew to resent it, struggle it and reject it, hoping to say our true identification and dignity as an individual.
In “The World of Nancy Kwan,” a memoir by the pioneering Hollywood star, we hear from the real-life lady who performed Suzie Wong.
We be taught an Asian actor attending to play an Asian position was a victory again in these days, because the roles have been taken by white actors sporting unusual slant-eyed make-up.
Kwan was born in Hong Kong in 1939. Her father was Chinese, an architect with a love for films. Her mom was English, a mannequin and actor, though she left when Kwan was younger, and she or he was raised by a stepmother. It was laborious as a result of being Eurasian was an anomaly, she recollects.
“I’ve broken barriers, celebrated achievements, overcome disappointments and survived tragedies, all part of my remarkable journey from Hong Kong to Hollywood and beyond. This is my story,” she writes within the prologue.
Her e-book is speckled with the massive names of that period, Pat Boone, Katharine Hepburn, Dick Van Dyke. Some passages learn like a gossip column, similar to her accounts of her friendship with Bruce Lee.
But she additionally depicts the racial obstacles of that interval.
All girls, particularly in Hollywood, have been attempting to be lovely and fascinating. In truth, being dubbed “the Asian Bardot,” referring to Brigitte Bardot, was a real praise.
She talks about how Jack Soo, a Japanese American who portrays a nightclub proprietor in “Flower Drum Song,” was incarcerated with different Japanese Americans in internment camps throughout World War II.
Kwan believes her story is about laborious work and development regardless of racism, not succumbing to it.
After all, Asian actors’ roles was once restricted to “Fu Manchu villains, hypersexualized Dragon Ladies and comic buffoons” and “shopkeepers, maids and houseboys,” based on Kwan.
And so getting featured on the quilt of Life journal, sporting a body-hugging cheongsam, counted as a victory.
Another large win is when Ross Hunter, a scorching producer, rushes over to her at a Hollywood celebration and casts her in “Flower Drum Song.”
The musical movie shattered stereotypes, she says, by specializing in fashionably dressed, rich Asians. Regardless of race, individuals cherish household, undergo heartbreak, giggle, sing, dance and dream of happiness, she writes.
Kwan calls the work “joyous entertainment with the universal message that whatever our race, we’re all alike.”
Even those that might discover that message missing in addressing the which means of variety and Asian American pleasure will acknowledge there’s a lot to be taught from Kwan’s historical past.
She is solely attempting to land roles, hopefully good ones that showcase her expertise in works by revered administrators.
Miyoshi Umeki, her good friend and one other distinguished Asian actor of that interval, didn’t like having to talk pidgin in her roles, however did it as a result of that was her job as knowledgeable.
That sort of ache is the legacy being explored in Kwan’s life.
Being an Asian in America is what she calls “our shared humanity,” wherein “East can meet West and possibly make the world a little better.”
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